


break my heart back into place

by anythingbutgrey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Pre-Epilogue, everybody gets a war trauma, everyone has nightmares and there's touching, post-DH, you get a war trauma and you get a war trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 11:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11989164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutgrey/pseuds/anythingbutgrey
Summary: They do keep ending up in corners with hushed whispers, looking frantically out the windows into the day. It makes everyone nervous. Hermione wants to apologize, but if she tried she knows it will come out, "I'm trying to save your life." But the war is over. The war is over, and Hermione's still fighting it.





	break my heart back into place

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011 for a Harry Potter!Wars ficathon. Archiving here.

After the war, it feels like they've gone camping again. No, she should clarify: they're surrounded by people and yet feel entirely set apart from them. This solemn mourning that creeps through the Burrow, that crawls into her and aches like the creak of an old door swinging shut -- Hermione and Harry aren't a true part of it. They have been invited into this family; they have people whose arms drape around them; they have beds that are at this point labeled _theirs_ , but they cannot feel this. They can't feel the utter loss of this, not entirely. They can look at George. No one else dares.

So, it oddly does feel like they've gone camping again, because even surrounded by everyone else it's still the two of them, sitting quietly in corners, shifting on the balls of their feet wondering where to stand at funerals, thinking about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Harry has a list of the funerals he'll be attending. She's not supposed to know, but he keeps it in his pocket and pulls it out in the moments where he's not sure what happens next. It's after the war and aimless for them both. They don't know what is supposed to come after.

They still sleep in shifts. This is a pattern she imagines will die soon enough, but they fall back into it in the Burrow. While everyone else climbs to bed she or Harry stay up and keep watch. Ron would too, but he's with his family again. The war has already begun to splinter away from him. Hermione sometimes watches him, asleep in arm chairs, and she just wants to reach out and touch him, like the light that still lives in him could seep from his fingertips into her bones. But there's everyone watching, and she's still got soot in her skin. Hermione hasn't touched Ron since the war died.

That's why she and Harry keep watch. These war-torn people deserve their respite, but neither she nor Harry can rest easy in this tenuous state of post-war. They're both still expecting someone to rebuild what came before, take the rhetoric and reframe it, carry on the battles. She and Harry talk about it constantly, in that way where they don't say very many words because they don't have to. They do keep ending up in corners with hushed whispers, looking frantically out of windows into the day. It makes everyone nervous. Hermione wants to apologize, but if she tried she knows it will come out, "I'm trying to save your life." But the war is over. The war is over, and Hermione's still fighting it.

Since she and Harry keep shifts, sometimes he won't quite make it upstairs, and will instead fall asleep on the couch in the living room, limbs draped over the sides and glancing against the floor. She likes those nights. It's familiar, seeing his body not so far away. The world seems less violent on those evenings, like she has her body pressed against a shield rather than a wall. Harry breathes quietly in the night, making tiny hushed sounds as his chest rises and falls, and Hermione watches them. She appreciates the noises a human body will make while resting, these little announcements of life. And when Harry stirs in his sleep with moaning tosses and turns, Hermione waits. He'll come out of it in a minute.

Except one night he doesn't. Hermione knows Harry's nightmares; she has seen them on the evenings they crawl forth and clutch at his throat. She knows the lashing of his hands and the exact pitch of the low, guttural scream. When the tossing behind her moves faster than usual and the scream starts unfurling, she places her tea on the windowsill and runs to him, catches his hands mid-air and pulls one close to her, brushing her free hand against his face.

"Harry," she whispers, eyes ticking the stairs for fear of waking the others, then looking back to his flushed face. "Harry, wake up."

He does after a moment, pulls himself out of the dream with a start that makes her jump. He stares at her, bewildered, for a long beat. Then, his hand slips out of hers as he pushes himself up to sitting and runs a hand through his hair. Her hand moves from his face to resting on his shoulder, and she waits.

"Sorry," he mumbles. Typical.

Hermione shakes her head. "Are you okay?"

He shrugs. "Just a dream."

Harry moves to stand and Hermione moves aside, watching him as he gets up from the couch. He doesn't walk toward the stairs, though. Instead, he goes to the window.

Her hands fold in her lap. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Harry shrugs. His silhouetted shoulders, slouched forward, make him look far older than he is. "Nothing unusual. Lots of dead bodies. Lots of blood."

She takes in a small, unsure breath. After a pause, she asks, "And you alone?"

His head tilts. She can see it even when he stands shadowed. "Yeah."

Hermione waits. She's trying to see what her next move should be. With Harry, this is an act of studying, and she is very good at studying and very good at Harry. It's about the ticks in his hands and the lengths of his breath, turns of his neck and bends in his knees. The map of him tells her what to do next. After a moment, then, she stands and lingers next to him. The open space in front of the Burrow is beginning to lighten under the sweet blue of an oncoming dawn. She's not tired. She's already slept. Harry, on the other hand, looks spent, eyes downcast at her cup of tea still resting on the windowsill. She takes his hand, lacing her fingers in with his and grabbing hold of his wrist. This is a familiar motion, and he knows what it means. I won't let you drift away, it says. I will not let you disappear.

"It'll be morning soon," Harry whispers. Harry likes the day. Harry sleeps soundest during the day.

"Yes," she whispers against his shoulder.

He breathes. Her head, now lying against his arm, moves along with the rise and fall of his chest. "And we're still here."

It's not a lament. He does not mean here, still perched on patrol like the haunted creatures they are. He means here like _alive_ , like breathing, able to watch sunrises. The nightmares are always the same. Harry is always the last to die. But then he wakes up. He wakes up and she's always here.

"And we're still here," she whispers. He slips a hand around her waist, pulls her tight against his side and they wait, they wait, they wait for the sky to breathe into day.


End file.
